good evening ladies and gentlemen so welcome back to well calm today we're going to build a couple
different variations of a third-hand so for those of you that don't know what a third-hand is it's
something you can utilize if you don't have a shop helper you don't have a man cover around
where you're at it'll actually hold the pieces for you just through weight distribution so
we're gonna go ahead build a couple of those I'm gonna show you how to fabricate I mean there's
probably a hundred different variations feel free to build any design you want I'm just gonna cover
two of them today so let's go ahead and we're gonna start building okay so I'm going to do is
take this piece of 3/4 inch piece of all thread and I'm gonna grind it to a point that's gonna
be the point that I'll use to actually sit on the material when we use the third hand so I'm
just gonna run this on the table run the grinder back and forth get a nice point on there all right
so I have about a 24 inch piece of 1 inch tube right or 1 inch pipe right here it's about inch
and a quarter OD yeah 1 inch ID and what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to bend this into a
90 degree angle because once this is done it's gonna be kind of like a bird shape we're gonna
put little feet on here and the little that'll be his pecker this beak you know so now what
I'm gonna do I've got this bit roughly about 90 doesn't have to be perfect you know especially
for what it's gonna be I'm gonna cope one end of it out to be able to accept a piece of pipe
and then this part up here is we're going to trim that down we'll take a look at it I'm just gonna
go by you know how it looks how it functions okay I'll make it cut here and then I will
put that point into the top piece go ahead get this off the table should get reset up alright
so I'm just gonna find the the center of this pipe as the as its laying on the table so I'm
gonna just I'm gonna cope this out with a hole saw to be able to take that other piece that's
that's about straight centered just a little love tap on there now I can see where the holes
at and go in with a bigger Center punch and then actually make a punch mark for the that drill bit
[Music] okay so for that I just use this inch and a half hole saw okay it's pretty close to
the diameter this pipe it's about inch and a quarter OD I usually go an eighth inch over but
I didn't have a inch and a half hole saw bit so I went up to inch and three-eighths there got a
little bit of a gap I don't think it's gonna make a difference you know especially for what this is
we should be able to fill that in I'll just split the difference to get about a sixteenth
gap on either side it should be good to go you can't actually take the grinder and just clean
up some a little bit more on the inside and get a tighter fit if you needed to so I'm just going to
take these caps we cut these out on the quickie and just got them cleaned up with a grinder B
little end caps I'm gonna cap either side of this pipe off weld all the way around it and then just
kind of do a radius finish to it it'll kind of give a nice clean neat appearance and then this
will end up being welded to the center of the pipe I'm already talking you know I'm probably
gonna trim it back to here I needed that length in there so I could go from the roller to the the
center of that die but now I don't need that so I'll probably take this over to the the the chop
saw the evolution we have over there cut that off about here and then we'll insert that bolt
and that'll be the point that holds everything up I have to cut the bolt down a little bit -
[Music] all right so I went ahead and took all the mill scale off here just for the simple fact
that I'm gonna line that other piece up here in a minute and I'm gonna be doing some welding on
there but then I'm thinking about probably painting this thing once it's done except
for the area that I need to have contact with the table so I can get electrical connection through
there the rest of its gonna be painted though so I'll probably just put some blue painters
tape across the bottom when we paint it once I'm done I'll be able to peel that right off
that'll be the side that sits on the table when it's working is that's about where it's
gonna be and I'm just gonna eyeball here and say probably cut it back here to this mark
[Music]
so I have a galvanized nuts on here I just went ahead and took this to the grinder and knocked
the knock the coating off of that I'm just gonna do summit on this welding on this nut
this is just the nut on this size just to hold everything in place so that way I can weld on
it's not gonna shift around and then this will actually that little cap right there
is going to weld right on to the end of this and I'll cut this down to size that way this
is always replaceable so go ahead put a couple welds on there and keep chugging along [Music]
[Music]
all right so this is as far as I can go I'm going to go ahead and leave this nut right
here and back it out completely and that'll tell me how much space I can have on the inside and
then that's not kind of how I'll figure out what I can go back from the actual point of
this piece remember this one's interchangeable this isn't too technical I mean I realize that
nuts move it a little bit so I might be eighth 3/16 off but I can have more sticking out of
the the nose than I can have in that in the end of that Bend two and a half inches to the
end of that nut I'll just mark two and a half inches from the top side of that point [Music]
all right so I want to set this piece here Center so all I'm going to do is I'm going to start off
this piece is now eight and three sixteenths of an inch and divide that by two okay that tells me
my Center is four and eight you can figure this out in your head yeah but I wanted to give you
guys a visual and then the inch or the outside diameter my tube here is an inch and a quarter
so that's half of that's 5/8 so if I take Center - 5/8 it's gonna give me three and a half inches
so now I only really need to measure from one side okay I hit that three and a half inch mark
right here I should be good for this other side which it is so I'm pretty comfortable with that
I'll go ahead and get it tacked up make sure it's squared before I start welding it out I'll bite
a get up two or three spots and then we'll just weld that out and this one I'll be done [Music]
all right so here's one variation you got a little bit of adjustment up in the tip here you
can screw that in and out you can replace that I'm gonna go ahead and show you another option
that'll be adjustable as well so let's go ahead and get to that okay this is the second third
hand here in this piece right here that's gonna keep all that's gonna have all the weight all
the weight distribution is gonna come from here there's gonna be a four by four by inch and a
quarter steel block you probably seen us use it in other episodes to hold material up or use it
as a shim today we're gonna sacrifice it to build another third hand so we have one arm on the top
and then one set of legs on the bottom so this is actually what's gonna hold the material that we
did we need held with you know acting as a third hand or holding something up for us we can get a
tack on it or a weld that's gonna be this top piece here everything's gonna be secured with
a little wingnut we're just gonna bend pencil rod so it'll be adjustable so this will kind of
telescope in and out so we'll the feet in to a certain point and then the field come out kind
of like this one thing you can also do once you get done with this you can sharpen your point
or you can put silicon bronze on this and then you put silicon bronze on the feet too and kind
of use this as like your your workpiece clamp for smaller items that you have to get in there
you have to get a ground to the ground clamps too big this is nice to kind of pinpoint those areas
also if you're working on something that's next to bearings you can run that electrical current
through the part universe so it doesn't have to travel through a bearing it'll keep your bearings
from arcing out so let's go ahead and get to it we're gonna start off by cutting and bending some
pencil rod it's this one you guys build a bill without even have access to welding equipment so
this is all gonna be bent pencil rod I got a bolt that's gonna go on here first thing we do is I'm
going to find Center okay so I know this is a four inch block and I know you can go corner to corner
but I don't I don't want to try that because I have rounded edges if you had a centering head
you could use that but I don't have one at the moment so I'm just gonna send her over or move
over to the two inch mark use this mark all-pro basically a Silver Streak pencil a lot of people
have been asking about that it's a mark all pro you can get them on Amazon get them on the mark
all website so now I've got an X here you might not be able to see that I'm gonna go ahead and
hit this one Center punch and then I'm just gonna drill this out and then that'll make way for this
bolt right here so that's about a 5/16 bolt saw drill a 3/8 hole can give myself a little extra
space alright so to start this off I'm just gonna cut me to pieces at two-foot long one for the top
one for the bottom probably little bit more than I need but I'm rather having enough and not enough
you know I'm saying I can always cut off what I don't need later if I only need 18 inches for
the top lip alright so I went ahead and built this earlier it's nothing fancy it's just three pieces
of this 3/8 stock that way I'll be able to put it in the vise and it'll maintain that internal
diameter because it's the same outside diameter so whenever I go to bend everything I can use that to
keep my radius nice and tight so everything will fit together real smooth like so what I'm gonna do
is I'll just I'll find center of this piece heat it up and then put it in here and I'll be able to
bend this all the way around so I'm just gonna mark out a foot like I said earlier I have more
material than I need I'm probably gonna you lose a little bit due to the bend so they're not going
to come out exactly perfect but I'll be pretty close with it close enough good enough for this
I'll trim off any excess that I have once it's done that way everything will be nice and even
all right so we can have this cert or this side done so far this is gonna be the bottom portion
of the piece so it's gonna sit just like that or like this somehow I'm still up in the air of
whether I'm gonna bend these down a little bit to sit more closer to the table I think I want
to get everything else done for her first before I get into that before I make that decision so I'm
just kind of making this up as I go along as I've got an idea in my head and I'm just bending it to
kind of fit that that image so I just did a 180 degree Bend right here kick these out about 45
and then kick them back and I think here I just measured like two two and a half inches it's not
very critical you know for what it is so we're gonna go ahead I'm going to build the top portion
we'll get that set up and I'll show you exactly how that's gonna work and then we'll go from there
and then I'll decide how I'm gonna work with this I might even just bend it right here I might come
down with it 15 degrees or so we'll look at it see how it looks overall and then how it functions and
if I need to do any of that and then I'll cut the ends off to make everything nice and even [Music]
okay so this piece was just bent at 180 degrees I'm gonna go ahead and cut it right here this is
what is gonna allow it to slide back and forth on that bolt that's going to go in between the
the block so I'm just gonna make a cut right here to kind of even that up and then we should
be able to do an assembly and then make any additional adjustments I might have to tweak
this rod just a little bit I'm gonna get rid of this excess material before I do all right
so remember when I said I was gonna trim these down to where they'd be equal I'm just gonna
use a little square and I'm just gonna mark two points and then I'll do just two cuts utilizing
that porta ban and then they should be as even as we need them to be for this piece I'll throw
this back up in the vise cut both of these we'll do a test fit up and then I cut these
out earlier on the Quickie system they're just inch in inch and three quarter by inch
and a quarter pieces they're gonna sit right over top of this will Bend the wings down a
little bit or the outsides down a little bit so it'll hold everything kind of lock it in place
okay now we'll just kind of square this all up get it about where I
need it that way I can bend these little tabs down over the side just it'll secure
just a little bit more there we go so I'll heat this up just kind of tap it
this side heat it up tap it same thing here and then I'll trim that bolt down
alright so we got that side done we're gonna flip it over he's gonna repeat that alright so as you
can see it's you can slide this back and forth whichever way you want to go same thing with
the top piece I'm just gonna shorten it up so depending on how big your table is how how tall
the material is all that good stuff just snug this down now you get set up a little T joint
or you know whatever part piece you're working on there you go so magnets don't stick to stainless
or aluminum so this is a good alternative to hold parts in place you know especially you're working
in a shop if you have to you know set a nut on top of something and weld that or any any other small
objects these third hands are just great pieces to have in your shop you know whatever you're
working on you don't always have somebody to hold the material in place like I said some materials
you can't use magnets I like to use magnets a lot when I can but that can also interfere with your
arc you know so having these third hands I mean it's just a great addition to any shop you know
whether you use them at work or whether you use them at the house hope you guys found the video
entertaining go ahead and try and make these on your own or make different variations you can post
them up on our wall comm and our Facebook group you can post them on Instagram you know tag us in
it we'll check it out give you some feedback until next time make every well better than your last